South Korea and Germany feature prominently as the standout performances by medical authorities through the coronavirus pandemic. For good reasons since South Korea nipped a terrifying early spike in cases at the end of February (yes, two months ago) in the bud with its rigorous testing and isolating policy. So much so that its deaths per million population stand at only 5 or 1.25% of our rate in the UK. Germany has not kept its grim statistic at quite such a low number but it still stands at just 20% of ours. By far the lowest amongst European countries.
Bar one. Eight years ago, Greece was being dismissed as a dysfunctional state incapable of persuading its people to co-operate in the fiscal discipline (i.e. paying taxes) required to keep its economy in sufficient shape to remain within the eurozone. Today, it stands out as a beacon of well managed and self-disciplined behaviour through the coronavirus crisis which has (so far) kept its grim statistic down to only 13 deaths per million population or 3% of our level.
The one balancing item is that regional neighbours such as Cyprus, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania and Macedonia have managed to keep their rates within a similar range of between 10 and 30 per million population. So perhaps there is an element of geography and climate to explain the significant difference from the western European countries. Yet the contrast with nearby Italy seems strange and stark. They must all have been doing something right (taking the statistics at face value) and Greece in particular must take a bow for having implemented its control strategy with a ruthless efficiency which defies the cardboard cut-out caricature.
And for acting early. My own anecdotal slice of contact with this early action came from the academic world where a colleague from the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki e-mailed me on 6th March to say that he could not visit students in the UK that week and again on 10th March to say that all face-to-face lectures had just been banned by the Greek Ministry of Education. Only a fortnight, to be fair, before we switched to online delivery but at that stage every day of lockdown counted. My other anecdotal point of contact comes via friends and family in Corfu who relate a life of tight restrictions on movement imposed with quite draconian methods by the local police.
And finally my Greek colleagues regale me with their admiration for Professor Sofiras Tsiodras, the epidemiologist who is in charge of Greece’s coronavirus campaign and who communicates clearly and persuasively on the air waves. Quite the hero of the hour, it appears.
View from the Clapham Omnibus 